[BUG] The Vector Field Analyzer

[Martin Jackson]

I like this suggestion of having students submit screen shots from 
VFA to provide some verification for a calculation.  When I give 
examples or work out problems in class, I try to model the geometric 
thinking one can do as a consistency check either before or after a 
calculation.  I don't consistently require students to do this in the 
work they submit and I should.

I think VFA is underutilized in part because of the lack of 
documentation that Tevian points out.  It would be great if someone 
had a bit of funding to hire an undergraduate who could write a set 
of instructions for the basic features and perhaps collect ideas for 
specific assignments or projects have been developed by users.

I've pulled together the various instructions I gave to my students 
this semester at
http://www.math.ups.edu/~martinj/m221vfanotes.html
These are still organized by the original date just as a way of 
keeping the pieces separate.  (One of the pieces came from a handout 
and refers to the "problems above" which aren't included here.)

Martin



At 7:28 PM -0500 5/18/04, Smith, Alexander J. wrote:
>2. When I assign textbook homework problems from these sections,
>I ask students to turn in a screenshot showing they used VFA to
>"verify" their result. (If a textbook problem calls for doing a
>circulation integral and the answer is 2*Pi, then they need to
>calculate this and figure out how to use VFA to show a numerical approx. With
>Windows OS, you will need to teach them to use "Print Screen" and
paste into something tacky like Word.)


At 9:31 PM -0700 5/18/04, Tevian Dray wrote:
>  >>>>> Martin Jackson writes:
>     MJ> I would like to hear from others who use this in teaching.  How do
>     MJ> you use it?  In the classroom or as homework?  As a demonstration or
>     MJ> hands-on?  Optional or required?  What instructions or directions do
>     MJ> you give students?
>
>I use the vector field analyzer as a classroom demo only.  I provide a link to
>it (both a local copy and the original) on the course home page, and encourage
>students to play with it, but to my knowledge few if any students have taken
>me up on it.  I provide a minimal set of instructions, which you can find at:
>	http://oregonstate.edu/~drayt/MTH255/vfa2.html
>There is also a link on that page which will take you to an older version of
>the software, for which I wrote slightly more detailed directions.
>
>Tevian
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